h, Pickerel, Perch, Eels,
etc.,--while the larger quadrupeds are introduced upon the continents so
gradually prepared to receive them. The connection of events throughout
the Tertiaries, considered as leading up to the coming of man, may be
traced not only in the physical condition of the earth, and in the
presence of the large terrestrial Mammalia, but also in the appearance
of those groups of animals and plants which we naturally associate with
the domestic and social existence of man. Cattle and Horses are first
found in the middle Tertiaries; the grains, the Rosaceae, with their
variety of fruits, the tropical fruit-trees, Oranges, Bananas, etc., the
shade- and cluster-trees, so important to the comfort and shelter of
man, are added to the vegetable world during these epochs. The fossil
vegetation of the Tertiaries is, indeed, most interesting from this
point of view, showing the gradual maturing and completion of those
conditions most intimately associated with human life. The earth had
already its seasons, its spring and summer, its autumn and winter, its
seed-time and harvest, though neither sower nor reaper was there; the
forests then, as now, dropped their thick carpet of leaves upon the
ground in the autumn, and in many localities they remain where they
originally fell, with a layer of soil between the successive layers of
leaves,--a leafy chronology, as it were, by which we read the passage of
the years which divided these deposits from each other. Where the leaves
have fallen singly on a clayey soil favorable for receiving such
impressions, they have daguerreotyped themselves with the most wonderful
accuracy, and the Oaks, Poplars, Willows, Maples, Walnuts, Gum- and
Cinnamon-trees, etc., of the Tertiaries are as well known to us as are
those of our own time.

It was an eventful day, not only for science, but for the world, when a
Siberian fisherman chanced to observe a singular mound lying near the
mouth of the River Lena, where it empties into the Arctic Ocean. During
the warmer summer-weather, he noticed, that, as the snow gradually
melted, this mound assumed a more distinct and prominent outline, and at
length, on one side of it, where the heat of the sun was greatest, a
dark body became exposed, which, when completely uncovered, proved to be
that of an immense elephant, in so perfect a state of preservation that
the dogs and wolves were attracted to it as by the smell of fresh meat,
and came to feed upon